STRATFORD-ON-AVON.

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Thou soft-?owing Avon, by thy silver stream Of things more than mortal sweet Shakespeare would dream The fairies by moonlight dance round his green bed, For hallowd the turf is which pillowd his head.

 GARRICK.

 TO a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independend territorial sequence when, after a weary days travel, he kicks off his boots, thrusts his feet into slippers, and stretches himself before an inn-?re. Let the world without go as it may, let kingdoms rise or fall, so long as he has the wherewithal to pay his bill he is, for the time being, the very monarch of all he surveys. The armchair is his throhe poker his sceptre, and the little parlor, some twelve feet square, his undisputed empire. It is a morsel of certainly snatched from the midst of the uainties of life; it is a sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day: and he who has advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existenows the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoyment.

 "Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?" thought I, as I gave the ?re a stir, lolled ba my elbow-chair, and cast a plat look about the little parlor of the Red Horse at Stratford-on-Avon.

 The words of sweet Shakespeare were just passing through my mind as the clock struck midnight from the tower of the chur which he lies buried. There was a geap at the door, and a pretty chambermaid, putting in her smiling face, inquired, with a hesitating air, whether I had rung. I uood it as a modest hint that it was time to retire. My dream of absolute dominion was at an end; so abdig my throne, like a prudent poteo avoid being deposed, and putting the Stratfuide-Book under my arm as a pillow panion, I went to bed, and dreamt all night of Shakespeare, the jubilee, and David Garrick.

 The m was one of those quiing ms which we sometimes have in early spring, for it was about the middle of March. The chills of a long winter had suddenly given way; the north wind had spent its last gasp; and a mild air came stealing from the west, breathing the breath of life into Nature, and wooing every bud and ?ower to burst forth intrand beauty.

 I had e to Stratford on a poetical pilgrimage. My ?rst visit was to the house where Shakespeare was born, and where, acc to tradition, he was brought up to his fathers craft of wool-bing. It is a small mean-looking edi?ce of wood and plaster, a true ling-place of genius, which seems to delight in hatg its offspring in by-ers. The walls of its squalid chambers are covered with names and inscriptions in every language by pilgrims of all nations, ranks, and ditions, from the prio the peasant, and present a simple but striking instance of the spontaneous and universal homage of mankind to the great poet of Nature.

 The house is shown by a garrulous old lady in a frosty red face, lighted up by a cold blue, anxious eye, and garnished with arti?cial locks of ?axen hair curling from under an exceedingly dirty cap. She eculiarly assiduous in exhibiting the relics with which this, like all other celebrated shrines, abounds.

 There was the shattered stock of the very matchlock with which Shakespeare shot the deer on his poag exploits. There, too, was his tobacco-box, which proves that he was a rival smoker of Sir Walter Raleigh: the sword also with which he played Hamlet; and the identical lantern with which Friar Laurence discovered Romeo and Juliet at the tomb. There was an ample supply also of Shakespeares mulberry tree, which seems to have as extraordinary powers of self-multiplication as the wood of the true cross, of which there is enough extant to build a ship of the line.

 The most favorite object of curiosity, however, is Shakespeares chair. It stands in a ey-nook of a small gloomy chamber just behind what was his fathers shop. Here he may many a time have sat when a boy, watg the slowly revolving spit with all the longing of an ur, or of an evening listening to the ies and gossips of Stratford dealing forth churchyard tales and legendary aes of the troublesome times of England. In this chair it is the of every ohat visits the house to sit:

 whether this be doh the hope of imbibing any of the inspiration of the bard I am at a loss to say; I merely mention the fact, and mine hostess privately assured me that, though built of solid oak, such was the fervent zeal of devotees the chair had to be new bottomed at least on three years. It is worthy of notice also, in the history of this extraordinary chair, that it partakes something of the volatile nature of the Santa Casa of Loretto, or the ?ying chair of the Arabian enter; for, though sold some few years sio a northern princess, yet, strao tell, it has found its way back again to the old ey-er.

 I am always of easy faith in such matters, and am ever willing to be deceived where the deceit is pleasant and costs nothing. I am therefore a ready believer in relics, legends, and local aes of goblins and great men, and would advise all travellers who travel for their grati?cation to be the same.

 What is it to us whether these stories be true or false, so long as ersuade ourselves into the belief of them and enjoy all the charm of the reality? There is nothing like resolute good-humored credulity in these matters, and on this occasion I went even so far as willingly to believe the claims of mine hostess to a lineal dest from the p..oet, when, unluckily for my faith, she put into my hands a play of her own position, which set all belief in her own sanguinity at de?ance.

 From the birthplace of Shakespeare a few paces brought me to his grave. He lies buried in the cel of the parish church, a large and venerable pile, mouldering with age, but richly ored. It stands on the banks of the Avon on a<df</dfn>n embowered point, and separated by adjoining gardens from the suburbs of the town. Its situation is quiet aired; the river runs murmuring at the foot of the churchyard, and the elms which grow upon its banks droop their branches into its clear bosom. An avenue of limes, the boughs of which are curiously interlaced, so as to form in summer an arched way of foliage, leads up from the gate of the yard to the church-porch. The graves are rown with grass; the gray tombstones, some of them nearly sunk into the earth, are half covered with moss, which has likewise tihe reverend old building. Small birds have built their s among the ices and ?ssures of the walls, and keep up a tinual ?utter and chirping; and rooks are sailing and g about its lofty gray spire.

 In the course of my rambles I met with the gray-headed sexton, Edmonds, and apanied him home to get the key of the church.

 He had lived in Stratford, man and boy, fhty years, and seemed still to sider himself a vigorous man, with the trivial exception that he had nearly lost the use of his legs for a feast. His dwelling was a cottage looking out upon the Avon and its b meadows, and icture of that ness, order, and fort which pervade the humblest dwellings in this try. A low whitewashed room, with a stone ?oor carefully scrubbed, served for parlor, kit, and hall. Rows of pewter ahen dishes glittered along the dresser. On an old oaken table, well rubbed and polished, lay the family Bible and prayer-book, and the drawer taihe family library, posed of about half a score of well-thumbed volumes. An a clock, that important article of cottage furniture, ticked on the opposite side of the room, with a bright warming-pan hanging on one side of it, and the old mans horn-handled Sunday e oher. The ?replace, as usual, was wide and deep enough to admit a gossip knot within its jambs.

 In one er sat the old mans granddaughter sewing, a pretty blue-eyed girl, and in the opposite er erannuated y whom he addressed by the name of John Ange, and who, I found, had been his panion from childhood. They had played together in infancy; they had worked together in manhood; they were now t about and gossiping away the evening of life; and in a short time they will probably be buried together in the neighb churchyard. It is not often that we see two streams of existence running thus evenly and tranquilly side by side; it is only in such quiet "bosom ses" of life that they are to be met with.

 I had hoped to gather some traditionary aes of the bard from these a iclers, but they had nothio impart. The long interval during which Shakespeares writings lay in parative has spread its shadow over his history, and it is his good or evil lot that scarcely anything remains to his biographers but a sty handful of jectures.

 The sexton and his panion had been employed as carpenters on the preparations for the celebrated Stratford Jubilee, and they remembered Garrick, the prime mover of the fete, who superintehe arras, and who, acc to the sexton, was "a short punch man, very lively and bustling." John Ange had assisted also in cutting down Shakespeares mulberry tree, of which he had a morsel in his pocket for sale; no doubt a sn quier of literary ception.

 I was grieved to hear these two worthy wights speak very dubiously of the eloquent dame who shows the Shakespeare house.

 John Ange shook his head when I mentioned her valuable and inexhaustible colle of relics, particularly her remains of the mulberry tree; and the old sexton even expressed a doubt as to Shakespeare having been born in her house. I soon discovered that he looked upon her mansion with an evil eye, as a rival to the poets tomb, the latter having paratively but few visitors. Thus it is that historians differ at the very outset, and mere pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into different els even at the fountain-head.

 roached the church through the avenue of limes, aered by a Gothic porch, highly ored, with carved doors of massive oak. The interior is spacious, and the architecture and embellishments superior to those of most try churches. There are several a mos of nobility ary, over some of which hang funeral escuts and banners dropping piecemeal from the walls. The tomb of Shakespeare is in the cel. The place is solemn and sepulchral. Tall elms wave before the pointed windows, and the Avon, which runs at a short distance from the walls, keeps up a low perpetual murmur. A ?at stone marks the spot where the bard is buried. There are four lines inscribed on it, said to have been written by himself, and which have in them somethiremely awful. If they are indeed his own, they show that solicitude about the quiet of the grave which seems natural to ?ne sensibilities and thoughtful minds:

 Good friend, for Jesus sake, forbeare

 To dig the dust inclosed here.

 Blessed be he that spares these stones,

 And curst be he that moves my bones.

 Just over the grave, in a niche of the wall, is a bust of Shakespeare, put up shortly after his death and sidered as a resemblahe aspect is pleasant and serene, with a ?nely-arched forehead; and I thought I could read in it clear indications of that cheerful, social disposition by which he was as much characterized among his poraries as by the vastness of his genius. The inscriptioions his age at the time of his decease, ?fty-three years--an untimely death for the world, for what fruit might not have been expected from the golden autumn of such a mind, sheltered as it was from the stormy vicissitudes of life, and ?ourishing in the sunshine of popular and royal favor?

 The inscription oombstone has not been without its effect.

 It has prevehe removal of his remains from the bosom of his native place to Westminster Abbey, which was at oime plated. A few years since also, as some laborers were digging to make an adjoining vault, the earth caved in, so as to leave a vat space almost like an arch, through whiight have reached into his grave. No one, however, presumed to meddle with his remains so awfully guarded by a maledi; a any of the idle or the curious or any collector of relics should be tempted to it depredations, the old sexto watch over the place for two days, until the vault was ?nished and the aperture closed agaiold me that he had made bold to look in at the hole, but could see her nor bones--nothing but dust. It was something, I thought, to have seen the dust of Shakespeare.

 o this grave are those of his wife, his favorite daughter, Mrs. Hall, and others of his family. On a tomb close by, also, is a full-length ef?gy of his old friend John be, of usurious memory, on whom he is said to have written a ludicrous epitaph.

 There are other mos around, but the mind refuses to dwell on anything that is not ected with Shakespeare. His idea pervades the place; the whole pile seems but as his mausoleum.

 The feelings, no longer checked and thwarted by doubt, here indulge in perfect ?deher traces of him may be false or dubious, but here is palpable evidend absolute certainty.

 As I trod the sounding pavement there was something intense and thrilling in the idea that iruth the remains of Shakespeare were moulderih my feet. It was a long time before I could prevail upon myself to leave the place; and as I passed through the churchyard I plucked a branch from one of the yew trees, the only relic that I have brought from Stratford.

 I had now visited the usual objects of a pilgrims devotion, but I had a desire to see the old family seat of the Lucys at Charlecot, and to ramble through the park where Shakespeare, in pany with some of the roisterers of Stratford, itted his youthful offence of deer-stealing. In this harebrained exploit we are told that he was taken prisoner and carried to the keepers lodge, where he remained all night in doleful captivity. When brought into the presence of Sir Thomas Lucy his treatment must have been galling and humiliating; for it sht upon his spirit as to produce a rough pasquinade which was af?xed to the park gate at Charlecot.*

 This ?agitious attack upon the dignity of the knight so insed him that he applied to a lawyer at Warwick to put the severity of the laws in force against the rhyming deer-stalker. Shakespeare did not wait to brave the united puissance of a knight of the shire and a try attorney. He forthwith abahe pleasant banks of the Avon and his paternal trade; wandered away to London; became a hanger-on to the theatres; then an actor; and ?nally wrote for the stage; and thus, through the persecution of Sir Thomas Lucy, Stratford lost an indifferent wool-ber and the wained an immortal poet. He retained, however, for a long time, a sense of the harsh treatment of the lord of Charlecot, and revenged himself in his writings, but in the sportive way of a good-natured mind. Sir Thomas is said to be the inal of Justice Shallow, and the satire is slyly ?xed upon him by the justices armorial bearings, which, like those of the knight, had white luces+ in the quarterings.

 * The following is the only staant of this lampoon:

 A parliament member, a justice of peace,

 At home a poor scarecrow, at London an asse,

 If lowsie is Lucy, as some volke miscalle it,

 Then Lucy is lowsie, whatever befall it.

 He thinks himself great;

 Yet an asse in his state,

 We allow by his ears but with asses to mate,

 If Lucy is lowsie, as some volke miscalle it,

 Then sing lowsie Lucy whatever befall it.

 + The luce is a pike or jack, and abounds in the Avon about Charlecot.

 Various attempts have been made by his biographers to soften and explain away this, early transgression of the poet; but I look upon it as one of those thoughtless exploits natural to his situation and turn of mind. Shakespeare, when young, had doubtless all the wildness and irregularity of an ardent, undisciplined, and ued genius. The poetic temperament has naturally something in it of the vagabond. Wheo itself it runs loosely and wildly, and delights ihing etrid litious. It is often a turn up of a die, in the gambling freaks of fate, whether a natural genius shall turn out a great rogue reat poet; and had not Shakespeares mind fortuaken a literary bias, he might have as daringly transded all civil as he has all dramatic laws.

 I have little doubt that, in early life, when running like an unbroken colt about the neighborbood of Stratford, he was to be found in the pany of all kinds of odd anomalous characters, that he associated with all the madcaps of the place, and was one of those unlucky urs at mention of whom old men shake their heads and predict that they will one day e to the gallows. To him the poag in Sir Thomas Lucys park was doubtless like a foray to a Scottish knight, and struck his eager, and as yet untamed, imagination as something delightfully adventurous.*

 * A proof of Shakespeares random habits and associates in his youthful days may be found in a traditionary ae, picked up at Stratford by the elder Ireland, aioned in his "Picturesque Views on the Avon."

 About seven miles from Stratford lies the thirsty little market-town of Bedford, famous for its ale. Two societies of the village yeomanry used to meet, uhe appellation of the Bedford topers, and to challehe lovers of good ale of the neighb villages to a test of drinking. Among others, the people of Stratford were called out to prove the strength of their heads; and in the number of the champions was Shakespeare, who, in spite of the proverb that "they who drink beer will think beer," was as true to his ale as Falstaff to his sack. The chivalry of Stratford was staggered at the ?rst o, and sounded a retreat while they had yet the legs to carry them off the ?eld. They had scarcely marched a mile when, their legs failing them, they were forced to lie down under a crab tree, where they passed the night. It was still standing, and goes by the name of Shakespeares tree.

 In the m his panions awaked the bard, and proposed returning to Bedford, but he deed, saying he had enough, having drank with

 Piping Pebworth, Dang Marston,

 Haunted Hilbro, Hungry Grafton,

 Dudging Exhall, Papist Wicksford,

 Beggarly Broom, and Drunken Bedford.

 "The villages here alluded to," says Ireland, "still bear the epithets thus givehe people of Pebworth are still famed for their skill on the pipe and tabor; Hilbh is now called Haunted Hilbh; and Grafton is famous for the poverty of its soil."

 The old mansion of Charlecot and its surrounding park still remain in the possession of the Lucy family, and are peculiarly iing front being ected with this whimsical but eventful circumstan the sty history of the bard. As the house stood at little more than three miles distance from Stratford, I resolved to pay it a pedestrian visit, that I might stroll leisurely through some of those ses from which Shakespeare must have derived his earliest ideas of rural imagery.

 The try was yet naked and lea?ess, but English sery is always verdant, and the sudden ge iemperature of the weather was surprising in its quiing effects upon the landscape. It was inspiring and animating to withis ?rst awakening of spring; to feel its warm breath stealing over the seo see the moist mellow earth beginning to put forth the green sprout and the tender blade, and the trees and shrubs, in their reviving tints and bursting buds, giving the promise of returning foliage and ?ower. The cold snow-drop, that little borderer on the skirts of winter, was to be seen with its chaste white blossoms in the small gardens before the cottages. The bleating of the new-dropt lambs was faintly heard from the ?elds. The sparrow twittered about the thatched eaves and budding hedges; the robin threw a livelier o his late querulous wintry strain; and the lark, springing up from the reeking bosom of the meadow, towered away into the bright ?eecy cloud, p forth torrents of melody. As I watched the little songster mounting up higher and higher, until his body was a mere spe the white bosom of the cloud, while the ear was still ?lled with his music, it called to mind Shakespeares exquisite little song in Cymbeline:

 Hark! hark! the lark at heavns gate sings,

 And Phoebus gins arise,

 His steeds to water at those springs,

 On chaliced ?owers that lies.

 And winking mary-buds begin

 To ope their golden eyes;

 With every thing that pretty bin,

 My lady sweet arise!

 Ihe whole try about here is poetic ground: everything is associated with the idea of Shakespeare. Every old cottage that I saw I fancied into some resort of his boyhood, where he had acquired his intimate knowledge of rustic life and manners, and heard those legendary tales and wild superstitions which he has woven like witchcraft into his dramas. For in his time, we are told, it ular amusement in winter evenings "to sit round the ?re, and tell merry tales of errant knights, queens, lovers, lords, ladies, giants, dwarfs, thieves, cheaters, witches, fairies, goblins, and friars."*

 * Scot, in his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," ees a of these ?reside fancies: "And they have so fraid us with host bull-beggars, spirits, witches, urs, elves, hags, fairies, satyrs, pans, faunes, syrens, kit with the sticke, tritons, taurs, dwarfes, giantes, imps, calcars, jurors, nymphes, gelings, incubus, Robin-goodfellow, the spoorhe mare, the man in the oke, the hell-waihe ?er drake, the puckle, Tom Thombe, hobgoblins, Tom Tumbler, boneless, and such s, that we were afraid of our own shadowes."

 My route for a part of the way lay in sight of the Avon, which made a variety of the most fancy doublings and windings through a wide aile valley--sometimes glittering from among willows which fris borders; sometimes disappearing among groves or beh green banks; and sometimes rambling out into full view and making an azure sweep round a slope of meadow-land. This beautiful bosom of try is called the Vale of the Red Horse. A distant line of undulating blue hills seems to be its boundary, whilst all the soft intervening landscape lies in a manner ened in the silver links of the Avon.

 After pursuing the road for about three miles, I turned off into a footpath, which led along the borders of ?elds and under hedgerows to a private gate of the park; there was a stile, however, for the be of the pedestrian, there being a public right of way through the grounds. I delight in these hospitable estates, in which every one has a kind of property--at least as far as the footpath is ed. It in some measure reciles a poor man to his lot, and, what is more, to the better lot of his neighbor, thus to have parks and pleasure-grounds thrown open for his recreation. He breathes the pure air as freely and lolls as luxuriously uhe shade as the lord of the soil; and if he has not the privilege of calling all that he sees his own, he has not, at the same time, the trouble of paying for it and keeping it in order.

 I now found myself among noble avenues of oaks and elms, whose vast size bespoke the growth of turies. The wind sounded solemnly among their branches, and the rooks cawed from their hereditary s iree-tops. The eye rahrough a long lessening vista, with nothing to interrupt the view but a distant statue and a vagrant deer stalking like a shadow across the opening.

 There is something about these stately old avehat has the effect of Gothic architecture, not merely from the pretended similarity of form, but from their bearing the evidence of long duration, and of having had their in in a period of time with which we associate ideas of romantic grandeur. They betoken also the loled dignity and proudly-trated independence of an a family; and I have heard a worthy but aristocratic old friend observe, when speaking of the sumptuous palaentry, that "money could do much with stone and mortar, but thank Heaven! there was no such thing as suddenly building up an avenue of oaks."

 It was from wandering in early life among this rich sery, and about the romantic solitudes of the adjoining park of Fullbroke, which then formed a part of the Lucy estate, that some of Shakepeares entators have supposed he derived his noble forest meditations of Jaques and the enting woodland pictures in "As You Like It." It is in lonely wanderings through such ses that the mind drinks deep but quiet draughts of inspiration, and bees intensely sensible of the beauty and majesty of Nature. The imagination kindles into reverie and rapture, vague but exquisite images and ideas keep breaking upon it, and we revel in a mute and almost inunicable luxury of thought. It was in some such mood, and perhaps under one of those very trees before me, which threw their broad shades over the grassy banks and quivering waters of the Avon, that the poets fancy may have sallied forth into that little song which breathes the very soul of a rural voluptuary

 Unto the greenwood tree,

 Who loves to lie with me

 And tune his merry throat

 Unto the sweet birds note,

 e hither, e hither, e hither.

 Here shall he see

 No enemy,

 But winter and rough weather.

 I had now e in sight of the house. It is a large building of brick with stone quoins, and is ihic style of Queen Elizabeths day, having been built in the ?rst year of her reign. The exterior remains very nearly in its inal state, and may be sidered a fair spe of the residence of a wealthy try gentleman of those days. A great gateens from the park into a kind of courtyard in front of the house, ored with a grassplot, shrubs, and ?ower-beds. The gateway is in imitation of the a barba, being a kind of outpost and ?anked by towers, though evidently for mere or, instead of defehe front of the house is pletely in the old style with stone-shafted casements, a great bow-window of heavy stone-work, and a portal with armorial bearings over it carved in sto each er of the building is an octagon tower surmounted by a gilt ball aher-cock.

 The Avon, which winds through the park, makes a bend just at the foot of a gently-sloping bank which sweeps down from the rear of the house. Large herds of deer were feeding or reposing upon its borders, and swans were sailing majestically upon its bosom. As I plated the venerable old mansion I called to mind Falstaffs en on Justice Shallows abode, and the affected indifferend real vanity of the latter:

 "Falstaff. You have a goodly dwelling and a rich.

 Shallow. Barren, barren, barren; beggars all, beggars all, Sir John:--marry, good air."

 Whatever may have been the joviality of the old mansion in the days of Shakespeare, it had now an air of stillness and solitude.

 The great iron gateway that opened into the courtyard was locked, there was no show of servants bustling about the place; the deer gazed quietly at me as I passed, being no longer harried by the moss-troopers of Stratford. The only sign of domestic life that I met with was a white cat stealing with wary look and stealthy pace towards the stables, as if on some nefarious expedition. I must not omit to mention the carcass of a sdrel crow which I saw suspended against the barn-wall, as it shows that the Lucys still i that lordly abhorrence of poachers and maintain that rigorous exercise of territorial power which was so strenuously maed in the case of the bard.

 After prowling about for some time, I at length found my way to a lateral portal, which was the every-day entrao the mansion.

 I was courteously received by a worthy old housekeeper, who, with the civility and unicativeness of her order, showed me the interior of the house. The greater part has undergoerations and been adapted to modern tastes and modes of living: there is a ?ne old oaken staircase, and the great hall, that noble feature in an a?９９ｌib? manor-house, still retains much of the appeara must have had in the days of Shakespeare. The ceiling is arched and lofty, and at one end is a gallery in which stands an an. The ons and trophies of the chase, whierly adorhe hall of a try gentleman, have made way for family portraits. There is a wide, hospitable ?replace, calculated for an ample old-fashioned wood ?re, formerly the rallying-place of winter festivity. On the opposite side of the hall is the huge Gothic bow-window, with stone shafts, which looks out upon the courtyard. Here are emblazoned in stained glass the armorial bearings of the Lucy family for many geions, some being dated in 1558. I was delighted to observe in the quarterings the three white luces by which the character of Sir Thomas was ?rst identi?ed with that of Justice Shallow. They are mentioned in the ?rst se of the "Merry Wives of Windsor," where the justice, is in a rage with Falstaff for having "beaten his men, killed his deer, and broken into his lodge." The poet had no doubt the offences of himself and his rades in mind at the time, and we may suppose the family pride and vindictive threats of the puissant Shallow to be a caricature of the pompous indignation of Sir Thomas.

 "Shallow. Sir Hugh, persuade me not: I will make a Star Chamber matter of it; if he were twenty John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Sir Robert Shallow, Esq.

 Slender. In the ty of Gloster, justice of pead .

 Shallow. Ay, cousin Slender, and custalorum.

 Slender. Ay, and ratolorum too, and a gentleman born, master parson; who writes himself Armigero in any bill, warrant, quittance, or obligation, Armigero.

 Shallow. Ay, that I do; and have done any time these three hundred years.

 Slender. All his successone before him have do, and all his aors that e after him may; they may give the dozen white luces in their coat. . . .

 Shallow. The cil shall hear it; it is a riot.

 Evans. It is not meet the cil hear of a riot; there is no fear of Got in a riot; the cil, hear you, shall desire to hear the fear of Got, and not to hear a riot; take your vizaments in that.

 Shallow. Ha! o my life, if I were young again, the sword should end it!"

 he window thus emblazoned hung a portrait, by Sir Peter Lely, of one of the Lucy family, a great beauty of the time of Charles the Sed: the old housekeeper shook her head as she poio the picture, and informed me that this lady had been sadly addicted to cards, and had gambled away a great portion of the family estate, among which was that part of the park where Shakespeare and his rades had killed the deer. The lands thus lost had not beeirely regained by the family even at the present day. It is but justice to this ret dame to fess that she had a surpassingly ?ne hand and arm.

 The picture which most attracted my attention was a great painting over the ?replace, taining likenesses of Sir Thomas Lud his family who inhabited the hall iter part of Shakespeares lifetime. I at ?rst thought that it was the vindictive knight himself, but the housekeeper assured me that it was his son; the only likeness extant of the former being an ef?gy upon his tomb in the church of the neighb hamlet of Charlecot.*

 * This ef?gy is in white marble, and represents the knight in plete armor. Near him lies the ef?gy of his wife, and oomb is the following inscription; which, if really posed by her husband, places him quite above the intellectual level of Master Shallow:

 Here lyeth the Lady Joyce Lucy wife of Sir Thomas Lucy of Charlecot in ye ty of Warwick, Knight, Daughter and heir of Thomas A of Sutton in ye ty of Worcester Esquire who departed out of this wretched world to her heavenly kingdom ye 10 day of February in ye yeare of our Lod 1595 and of her age 60 and three. All the time of her lyfe a true and faythful servant of her good God, never detected of any cryme or vice. In religion most sounde, in love to her husband most faythful and true. In friendship most stant; to what in trust was itted unto her most secret. In wisdom excelling. In g of her house, bringing up of youth in ye fear of God that did verse with her moste rare and singular. A great maintayner of hospitality. Greatly esteemed of her betters; misliked of none unless of the envyous. When all is spoken that be saide a woman so garnished with virtue as not to be bettered and hardly to be equalled by any. As shee lived most virtuotisly so shee died most Godly. Set downe by him yt best did knowe what hath byn written to be true.

 Thomas Lucye.

 The picture gives a lively idea of the e and manners of the time. Sir Thomas is dressed in ruff and doublet, white shoes with roses in them, and has a peaked yellow, or, as Master Slender would say, "a e-colored beard." His lady is seated on the opposite side of the picture in wide ruff and long stomacher, and the children have a most venerable stiffness and formality of dress. Hounds and spaniels are mingled in the family group; a hawk is seated on his per the fround, and one of the children holds a bow, all intimating the knights skill in hunting, hawking, and archery, so indispensable to an aplished gentleman in those days.*

 * Bishop Earle, speaking of the try gentleman of his time, observes, "His housekeeping is seen mu the different families of dogs and servitendant on their kennels; and the deepness of their throats is the depth of his discourse. A hawk he esteems the true burden of nobility, and is exceedingly ambitious to seem delighted with the sport, and have his ?st gloved with his jesses." And Gilpin, in his description of a Mr.

 Hastings, remarks, "He kept all sorts of hounds that run buck, fox, hare, otter, and badger; and had hawks of all kinds both long and short winged. His great hall was only strewed with marrow-bones, and full of hawk perches, hounds, spaniels, and terriers. On a broad hearth, paved with brick, lay some of the choicest terriers, hounds, and spaniels."

 I regretted to ?nd that the a furniture of the hall had disappeared; for I had hoped to meet with the stately elbow-chair of carved oak in which the try squire of former days was wont to sway the sceptre of empire over his rural domains, and in which it might be presumed the redoubled Sir Thomas sat enthroned in awful state when the ret Shakespeare was brought before him. As I like to deck out pictures for my owertai, I pleased myself with the idea that this very hall had been the se of the unlucky bards examination on the m after his captivity in the lodge. I fao myself the rural potentate surrounded by his body-guard of butler, pages, and blue-coated serving-men with their badges, while the luckless culprit was brought in, forlorn and chopfallen, in the custody of gamekeepers, huntsmen, and whippers-in, and followed by a rabble rout of try s. I fancied bright faces of curious housemaids peeping from the half-opened doors, while from the gallery the fair daughters of the knight leaned gracefully forward, eyeing the youthful prisoner with that pity "that dwells in womanhood." Who would have thought that this poor varlet, thus trembling before the brief authority of a try squire, and the sport of rustic boors, was soon to bee the delight of prihe theme of all tongues and ages, the dictator to the human mind and was to fer immortality on his oppressor by a caricature and a lampoon?

 I was now invited by the butler to walk into the garden, and I felt ined to visit the orchard and harbor where the justice treated Sir John Falstaff and Cousin Silence "to a last years pippin of his own grafting, with a dish of caraways;" but I bad already spent so much of the day in my ramblings that I was obliged to give up any further iigations. When about to take my leave I was grati?ed by the civil eies of the housekeeper and butler that I would take some refreshment--an instance of good old hospitality which, I grieve to say, we castle-hunters seldom meet with in modern days. I make no doubt it is a virtue which the present representative of the Lucys is from his aors; for Shakespeare, even in his caricature, makes Justice Shallow importunate in this respect, as witness his pressing instao Falstaff:

 "By cod pye, Sir, you shall not away to-night. . . . . I will not excuse you; you shall not be excused; excuses shall not be admitted; there is no excuse shall serve; you shall not be excused. . . . Some pigeons, Davy, a couple of short-legged hens; a joint of mutton; and any pretty little tiny kickshaws, tell `William Cook."

 I now bade a relut farewell to the old hall. My mind had bee so pletely possessed by the imaginary ses and characters ected with it that I seemed to be actually living among them. Everything brought them as it were before my eyes, and as the door of the dining-room opened I almost expected to hear the feeble voiaster Silence quavering forth his favorite ditty:

 "Tis merry in hall, when beards wag all,

 And welerry Shrove-tide!"

 Ourning to my inn I could not but re?e the singular gift of the poet, to be able thus to spread the magic of his mind over the very face of Nature, to give to things and places a charm and character not their own, and to turn this "w-day world" into a perfect fairy-land. He is ihe true enter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart. Uhe wizard in?uence of Shakespeare I had been walking all day in a plete delusion. I had surveyed the landscape through the prism of poetry, which tinged every object with the hues of the rainbow. I had been surrounded with fancied beings, with mere airy nothings jured up by poetic power, yet which, to me, had all the charm of reality. I had heard Jaques soliloquize beh his oak; had beheld the fair Rosalind and her panion adventuring through the woodlands; and, above all, had been once more present in spirit with fat Jack Falstaff and his poraries, from the august Justice Shallow down to the gentle Master Slender and the sweet Anne Page. Ten thousand honors and blessings on the bard who has thus gilded the dull realities of life with i illusions, who has spread exquisite and unbought pleasures in my chequered path, and beguiled my spirit in many a lonely hour with all the cordial and cheerful sympathies of social life!

 As I crossed the bridge over the Avon on my return, I paused to plate the distant chur which the poet lies buried, and could not but exult in the maledi which has kept his ashes undisturbed in its quiet and hallowed vaults. What honor could his name have derived from being mingled in dusty panionship with the epitaphs as and venal eulogiums of a titled multitude? What would a crowded er iminster Abbey have been, pared with this reverend pile, which seems to stand iiful loneliness as his sole mausoleum! The solitude about the grave may be but the offspring of an overwrought sensibility; but human nature is made up of foibles and prejudices, and its best and te affes are mingled with these factitious feelings. He who has sought renown about the world, and has reaped a full harvest of worldly favor, will ?nd, after all, that there is no love, no admiration, no applause, so sweet to the soul as that which springs up in his native place. It is there that he seeks to be gathered in pead honor among his kindred and his early friends. And when the weary heart and failing head begin to warn him that the evening of life is drawing ourns as fondly as does the infant to the mothers arms to sink to sleep in the bosom of the se of his childhood.

 How would it have cheered the spirit of the youthful bard when, wandering forth in disgrace upon a doubtful world, he cast back a heavy look upon his paternal home, could he have foreseen that before many years he should return to it covered with renown; that his name should bee the boast and glory of his native place; that his ashes should be religiously guarded as its most precious treasure; and that its lessening spire, on which his eyes were ?xed in tearful plation, should one day bee the bea t amidst the gentle landscape to guide the literary pilgrim of every nation to his tomb!

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